‘I have asked Leonora and Becky if they mind being left in charge of the girls for a day or two while we visit our parents,’ Georgia informed Max the following morning.
As they had only just begun on the most delightful part of keeping their marriage vows he thought she might have consulted him first. He didn’t want to stay at Flaxonby or Riverdale tonight or the next one and especially not the one after that. He wanted to spend each one here, loving his wife to the edge of reason, again and again for preference, in one of their beds, under their own roof and with a very solid old oak door between them and the rest of the world so they could make as much noise as they liked.
Staying with her parents at Riverdale or at empty, echoing Flaxonby, even when Zach and Martha were elsewhere, would not provide them with as much stone and oak ensured privacy as Holdfast could.
‘Why?’ he asked and felt his heart stop dancing and start sinking again as he recognised her closed expression and realised she wasn’t going to tell him until they got there and maybe not even then.
He thought last night proved they had something special and spectacular and worth lingering over between them. Growing it into complete love and trust as husband and wife one day would be his favourite project ever and the sooner she knew this was unique and worth fighting for every moment of every day, the better.
He watched her holding something of herself in reserve with him and it felt as if Jascombe was standing between them once again, like a lingering poison that had never quite left her system. He could almost hear the man’s evil little snicker as his ghost whispered he was Georgiana’s husband first and he had taught her not to give that much of herself to any man.
‘Because I need to see my parents and your mother writes that she is feeling lonely now Zachary and Martha are at Greygil yet again and Becky is living here with us.’
‘I suspect that is partly because she wanted to fuss over Martha more than Martha wants to be fussed over. My sister-in-law has insisted she and Zachary are needed at Greygil for the autumn gathering of the flocks. No doubt once they are there they will decide to stay until the baby is born. Are you sure you want to face my mother’s speculative looks and not very subtle hints that even more grandchildren would be very welcome?’ he challenged his wife’s plans, partly because he felt he should warn her what to expect and partly because he wanted her to change her mind and stay here with him.
He didn’t want Georgia to forget they might have added one more grandchild to his mother’s tally last night and again this morning. He intended to try again tonight and tomorrow night and for as many nights as she felt able to until they got there, even if they had to keep a lot quieter about it if everyone at Flaxonby or Riverdale were not to be fully aware they were working very hard on making a bigger family for Holdfast to echo with as soon as humanly possible.
There was no better way to make their marriage real for Georgia and so very unlike her last one than a dedicated quest for them to have children together, God willing. He couldn’t wait to show her how much he loved feeling and seeing his baby growing inside her, if they were blessed with one after all those hearty endeavours.
It would never be about heirs or heiresses for him, but the sheer wonder of a new and unique little being half from each of them. Yet Georgia seemed determined to tear them away from their marriage bed before its sheets were properly cold. If he thought too hard about his heady fantasy of her big with his child, he would try to coax her back upstairs to try again to make one with him and it clearly wasn’t what she wanted in the full light of day.
‘I expect you are right,’ she said.
Was he? He had to search past his frustration and worry to remember what he was supposed to be right about. Ah, yes, his mother dropping blatantly tactless hints about wanting more grandchildren. What a very sensible woman the Dowager Lady Elderwood was and if his wife wanted to hear them at first hand he certainly wasn’t going to stop his mother making less than gentle enquiries about when they might expect to welcome their first child together.
‘At least your mama will try to be subtle about it—I’m not so sure about my own,’ Georgia said with a rosy flush to say she was looking back on last night as well and wondering if they were already due to be parents in nine months’ time.
Now, wouldn’t that be wonderful? Her blush and that oddly shy look away from his hot gaze said she thought so, too. She hadn’t had any reason to do that until today and at least it was a reminder of how far they had come together. He just thought they had come further than they apparently had when he woke up with her in his arms early this morning and whispered why couldn’t they do it all again before she rang for Huggins to help her dress?
She had blushed as she twisted round to watch him with speculative, inviting eyes so they did just that and he had only just turned that infernal key in the locked door between their rooms and gone back to his own room when Huggins’s tap on the door said her mistress was being a slug-abed today and wasn’t it about time she was up and doing?
They had even met at the breakfast table with a hard and hasty kiss before the head footman came in with fresh toasted muffins and caught them at it. Georgia had blushed deliciously and Max thought they were embarking on their first proper day as man and wife together here, He intended to remember every second of it for future nostalgia and many repeats of his matchless joy and contentment because his wife was now his lover as well.
After she had lain in his arms when their early morning interlude was over, while he revelled in the lovely feel of her nestling her spent body against his as she dreamt of goodness knew what and her breathing steadied in time with his, she must have been planning this journey. It felt as if she was standing back from them as lovers again, refusing to be all in all to him as he wanted to be for her.
He couldn’t read her thoughts now, had no idea how she really felt about him as they stood watching one another and his confidence in who they were now as man and wife was in danger of seeping away.
‘I shall ride,’ he said abruptly and saw a flicker of hurt in her eyes before she veiled it from him. So, here they were again—dancing around one another like performers in a stately minuet and of course he must ride to avoid the disappointment of knowing she was hiding from him again even after those two wondrous conflagrations in Mrs Chilton’s bedchamber.
‘Very well, I will meet you at Riverdale,’ she said as if it took a lot more resolution to play the stiffly formal Mrs Chilton than he wanted to know about.
He could take it back, climb into her elegantly comfortable travelling carriage with her and...
No, don’t think about the and part of that idea, Chilton, it will unman you.
Georgia probably needed a nap rather than yet more husbandly demands now they had got started on being lovers. Even if she didn’t want to sleep, he could hardly oust her maid from the seat opposite and pull up the blinds so they could make love yet again as the miles flashed past and all the servants would know exactly what the master and mistress of Holdfast were doing behind them.
She must have been planning this trip ever since Max went back to his own room to bathe and shave and try to stop humming joyful tunes under his breath only a couple of hours ago. Or was she doing it as she lay in his arms this morning with that dreamy smile on her lovely face and he thought it was solely meant for him?
Never mind the prickle of unease, the vague sense of being hard done by that twisted last night and this morning into something less than he had been so sure it was at the time—he had to change into riding gear and get ready to escort his lady back to their old homes in Yorkshire and whatever she wanted to do there more than make love to him as often as such a delayed honeymoon might have excused them doing.
Georgia was gone by the time he and Sam met in the stable yard so they could ride cross country to catch up with her neat travelling carriage and four. Her sudden need to get away from Holdfast, the place where they had finally become husband and wife last night, felt dangerous to his most cherished hopes and dreams. He should be feeling overjoyed to have made love to the woman he had always dreamed of loving, but doubt whispered she might be regretting it in the cold light of day. Maybe this sudden journey was meant to set him at a distance again and he wasn’t sure he could stop there this time.
Now they were here. As Max had only caught up with the carriage just before they reached Riverdale Village, that felt tardy and a little bit insulting of him. Georgia wanted to get this over with before she lost her nerve. So much of her was arguing she was stupid to have done this. That she should have stayed at Holdfast and waited to find the right words to say what she needed to say to Max. It wasn’t as if they didn’t know one another through and through and a lot better than they had done even yesterday.
But she had tried so hard to find the words to tell him how she felt about him as she lay dreamy and sated in his arms this morning and they just would not come. Not even while he was still there with her, still holding her as if he loved the feel of them naked and so close together.
She had been so sure that words didn’t matter while he still held her, but as soon as he went back to his room and Huggins bustled in, her inability to tell her own husband that she loved him felt choking and almost terrible. She wanted him to know, wanted to tell him she loved him beyond her wildest dreams of loving. She needed to tell him she had been such a fool when they were both young she almost hated the younger version of herself for being so stupid.
That silly headlong version of her hadn’t even seen his young love for her when it was so tender and unprotected she must have hurt him so very badly. It felt as if she had hurt that boy so much, how could the man he was now ever truly forget her insensitivity and love her as he might have done back then?
Now she knew she had to dig the words out of herself and give him everything she had refused to give him in the past. She could only start from here somehow, where all that denial and stupidity had begun when they were eighteen and still living on their family estates. It was all she could offer him and hope to convince him he had been right all along—they were born to love each other and she had been such a fool not to see it, too.
She was as tense as a bow string now and even that felt wrong after the lovely relaxation she had revelled in just a few hours ago in Max’s arms as they made love by daylight and it was even more powerful and deliciously wonderful than it had been last night. He had made her feel so much, got her to see herself as he saw her for a magical few hours. She had felt truly beautiful and he had given her such a heady sense of freedom that she marvelled that marriage to him had seemed like a trap when they began it.
She had wasted six whole weeks in ignorance of what truly loving her husband felt like, but now she knew she had to do this to let him know she really did love him. It felt as if she wouldn’t be able to find the right words to say how she felt about him unless she made things clear to both her parents at long last. She just hoped Max would still want her afterwards.
‘Oh, what a lovely surprise,’ her mother cried as her daughter entered the room with Max looming behind her. No doubt he was wondering as much as her mother and father why he hadn’t even been given time to go upstairs and change out of his riding clothes.
‘Good afternoon, Mama,’ Georgia said with a quick kiss on the cheek for her still very handsome mother while her stern glance dared Mrs Welland to comment on the aroma of horse as she shook hands with her son-in-law with such pursed lips they said it for her.
‘I have sent for Papa,’ Georgia added concisely. Then she stood silently waiting for him because this wasn’t a social call and she was too tense to sit opposite her mother like a meek little daughter and take tea. ‘And before you say or even imply anything about his manners, I asked Max not to take the time to go to Flaxonby so he can bathe and change after riding here so hastily at my request.’
‘I can’t imagine why you didn’t travel in the carriage with my daughter, Maxwell,’ her mother said anyway and Georgia sighed impatiently.
‘I don’t suppose you can, Mrs Welland,’ Max said blandly.
Despite her growing tension Georgia almost laughed as she imagined what he was thinking and why he chose to ride rather than scandalise the coachman and groom and where on earth would they have put Huggins?
‘Ah, Perkins didn’t imagine you, then, my love,’ her father said as he entered the room.
He kissed his daughter on both cheeks and gave her his usual bear hug before greeting Max easily and Georgia felt a little more sure that this had been the right thing to do. Not only did she need to free herself and tell Max how she felt about him, but she thought her father deserved better than her mother had been willing to allow him until now.
‘There is something I should have told you both a long time ago,’ she said and in the tense silence as she searched for the right words she could almost feel her father and husband silently arguing with her, but her mother needed to know and Georgia needed to say it. ‘You always wanted me to marry a nobleman, Mama. You trained me up to do so, taught me to flatter or condescend depending on the rank of those above and below the lofty place in society you expected me to fill one day.’
‘I taught you manners, taste and refinement. A lady needs the esteem of those around her and there’s nothing wrong with respecting rank as it deserves.’
‘Not as it deserves maybe, but in my experience that’s not very much. Rank is just a reward for a deed done by a man’s ancestors, good or bad. It says nothing about him as a person.’
‘Nonsense, proper respect for rank is the bedrock of society.’
‘Then I pity us all, Mama, because Edgar hit me for the first time the morning after our wedding and he went on doing it whenever I wasn’t with child until the day he died. His father’s rank and generations of privilege made sure he had sturdy enough doors to hide it behind and enough influence to keep the rumours he was a beast and a bully at bay. The sad truth is Lord Edgar Jascombe was no better than the tavern bully who gives his wife a black eye when he gets home drunk simply because she exists and he likes doing it.’
‘No! No, I won’t believe it. He was the son of a duke; he could not have been so cruel to his own wife.’
‘Oh, but he was, Mama. I hid the truth from you because I thought it would break your heart to know your precious son-in-law had feet of clay. I hid the bruises and the yanked muscles and all the humiliations he liked heaping on me from everyone except Max. Even after Edgar died and I was so ashamed he had made a victim of me for so long I went on protecting you from what I had been subjected to by one of your precious lords.’
There was a long silence and she remembered the pretty room her mother had decorated for her with so much love when she was a girl and knew her mother loved her despite her ridiculous ambitions for her only child. This must be hurting her, but protecting her from the truth wasn’t doing any good either.
Learning to hide her feelings, to be silent and hold back the truth, had to be the reason why her tongue tied itself in knots whenever she tried to tell Max she loved him. The words stuck in her throat even now and she knew she had to unlock them somehow, but what if it was too late and Max didn’t believe her?
‘I... I don’t know what to say,’ her mother said as love for her daughter fought with her long-held belief that peers of the realm were the human equivalent of Greek gods come down from Olympus to walk the earth with mere mortals.
‘I had to get you to see what you are throwing away, Mama. I didn’t mean to make you cry, only to finally get you to understand how lucky you are to have married a good man. Papa is a good and faithful husband and he’s kind, but you have set him lower than any so-called gently born male simply because his father made a fortune in trade. No, don’t stop me from telling Mama the truth she should already know about you, Papa. You are a good man and I know to my cost how hard they are to find.’
She paused as the most crucial words of all threatened to seize in her throat again, but she had to force them out this time.
‘Max is one, but I turned my back on him because I wanted a title and to live in a stately pile when I was eighteen, because you brought me up to think that would be so wonderful how could I not want it, Mama. Max loved me when we were both eighteen, but I ignored his love, made light of it and hurt him so badly that I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself for what I did to him back then.
‘He was the only person I could turn to when Edgar died and I had to tell someone how awful my life with him had been. Max married me to save me from having to live at Mynham again with the girls, in the same miserable rooms where I was beaten and humiliated for three long years by my first and supposed-to-be noble husband.’
‘Max is...’ She paused again as she searched for the right words and he went to speak, but she put a finger on his lips to ask him not to. This wasn’t the time or place to be so aware of his mouth under her touch and want to caress it, then stare into his dark eyes with all she felt for him in her own. ‘Max is going to let me speak,’ she said with a severe look, ‘because he loves me.’
‘Ah, very well,’ he said with a nod to say that was why and he was glad she knew it.
‘Max has been my best friend since we were old enough to get into mischief together, but I still broke his heart when we were young. I hate the thought of the ruthless little title hunter I was back then. I had a second son with a better title than his and a suite of grand rooms in a grand house in my sights and I wasn’t going to be diverted by a silly little thing like love.’
‘If Lord Chert did not marry or produce a son, you could have been a duchess one day,’ her mother said as if she was still clinging on to that foolish old dream.
‘A duchess chained to a monster. Why can’t you see love is far more important than rank and privilege even now, Mama? I have more real love and joy in my life than the Duke of Ness and his stuffy peers have between them now because I love Max and I think he still loves me. I love my husband and you can’t imagine how sweet it is for me to be able to say how much I love Max when I hated my first husband so bitterly I was glad he died and set me free even if I did feel guilty about it.’
At last she could say it and now she had started she couldn’t seem to stop.
‘You love me?’ Max said so quietly Georgia had to step closer to hear him and almost forgot they had an audience.
‘I do,’ she said on a long sigh as the ache in her throat finally melted away.
‘And about bloody time, too,’ he said and she put her hand over his mouth in shock at his language and in a lady’s drawing room, too! Suddenly she could laugh as well as tell him she loved him and it felt absolutely wonderful.
He was her darling Max, her everyday sort of husband as well as the man who put the stars in the sky for her and made that everyday world seem so much brighter. Her life was real with him, this extraordinary man who had loved her even when she didn’t deserve it. She loved him so much it made silly young Georgia look more of a fool than ever.
She smiled up at him like a besotted fool, grabbed his hand and turned so they could face her parents together. ‘I had to try to make you see what you are throwing away, Mama. The character of a man is all that matters, you see? Not what his ancestors did to be made into lords or dukes—and that’s usually best not enquired into too deeply.’